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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25487788">the new jerusalem</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/drawlight'>drawlight (snagov)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Forbidden Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Public Sex, Roleplay, Romance, Smut, scala cinema</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:42:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,392</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25487788</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/drawlight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In a dark theater and without names or voices, intricate rituals are constructed to allow them to touch each other's skin.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the new jerusalem</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/rfsmiley/gifts">rfsmiley</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>"And the tower bells chime, 'ding dong' they chime</em><br/>
<em>They're singing, 'Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.'"</em><br/>
Patti Smith, <em>Gloria: In Excelsis Deo</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Are you hungry?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Starving.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Here, take a bite. It'll keep the hunger away, keep you alive.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What is it?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>An apple, of course.</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>London<br/>
</em>
  <em>1983</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He has often dreamed of the Scala Cinema.</p><p>Here Crowley is again, looking up at it and frowning. His appearance is an illusion, looking for all the world that he might be midway in the journey of his life. His hands are lined. He’s still in black, still in sunglasses. A knockoff John Cale with far, far less to offer. What does he have? A sleek car and a pile of records. A mostly empty flat. (He’d bought it for the light, for his collection of potted plants. Yes, only the light had mattered.) Back in his flat, you would find little of him. There is a half-finished glass of wine on the side table, a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. (It is cracked at the spine, open and face down.) An electric National guitar is over in the corner. A turntable dominates the space, surrounded by a pile of records like a shrine.</p><p>His foot is bouncing. Restless. Useless. At odd ends and flushed red. His blush starts in his ears, his cheeks, chases all the way down his spine. He knows why he is here. </p><p>They had, as with most of their ideas, been drunk. Crowley had been flung out across the dark brown leather of the sofa. A self-critical pile of right angles and hypotenuses. The back of the bookshop had, as always, looked like rubble. As if an earthquake had hit and the stones flung apart. But the stones are just books. Pillars and piles of books here and there. This isn’t chaos, not to the perfect recall of the shopkeeper, who knows each pile by heart, the exact balance to not damage the books. This pale-haired bookseller that had sat across from him, in absurdly out-of-date pressed trousers and a waistcoat, tucking away a worn and fading pocketwatch. There is a bowtie too, of all damnable things, a bowtie in tartan. Aziraphale’s curator hands had cupped around his own glass of scotch. His river blue eyes focused on Crowley, something of an equally and unequivocally drunk expression on his face.</p><p>They shouldn’t be friends. And yet. </p><p>Crowley shouldn’t want more. Shouldn’t swallow down <em>I love you </em>like a pill without water. Shouldn’t gather up the smell of Aziraphale’s cologne and file it away. Shouldn’t brush their hands as the wine is passed from one to the other and back again, shouldn't remember the exact texture of his skin. </p><p>And yet. </p><p>"Conquests?" Crowley had repeated, trying to parse what Aziraphale had just said through a haze of scotch. </p><p>"Well, yes, my dear. Surely, with the nature of your ... <em>work</em>." Aziraphale had shifted uncomfortably, crossing his legs in a manner that artlessly betrayed the exact meaning of his inquiry. </p><p><em>Oh. </em>"Er, yeah," he had said, coughing. "Lots of   - conquests. Sure. Whole lot of 'em. Got a commendation for it even, especially after that bit with Casanova." His jaundice-colored eyes had narrowed then, "What about you, angel? Are you handing out flashes of love? You know, sampling the <em>goods</em>?" </p><p>Aziraphale had flushed, his cheeks as red as apples. His well-bitten mouth had parted, closed, then tried again. "Well, in a manner of <em>love, </em>one could very well argue that it might fall to my side and well, frankly, I'd be remiss in not, well - " He prattled on with fretting fingers in the exact manner that betrayed a complete lack of experience, contrary to his words. They had stared at each other in the frank and unguarded manner of the truly drunk, both keenly aware of their farce. Both keenly aware of the <em>other </em>being aware.</p><p>The room had swollen with tension.</p><p>"What have you done then?" Crowley had asked, peeling his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. </p><p>"What do you mean?"</p><p>"One of your - " he gestures with long, rambling fingers. <em>Fantasies. </em>"Conquests. Tell me. Go on."</p><p>Aziraphale had blinked, blushing further and drinking quickly again from his glass. "Well, I suppose - " he had hesitated, then looked up with eyes bright enough to catch fire. "Do you know of a place called the Scala?"</p><p>"Yeah," Crowley had drawled, arching an eyebrow. "S'my specialty. Proud of that one."</p><p>"I met a man there and, well, <em>indulged</em> as you might say." He drew a well-manicured nail around the lip of his glass, slow and considering. "Just for the night. Just there. No names. Never saw his face. Completely anonymous."</p><p>Crowley's heart played upon his ribcage. He watched Aziraphale, already growing hot and hard in the tight trap of his trousers. He licked his narrow lip, troubling to breathe. <em>This is your fantasy. This is what you think about at night, alone here. In this bookshop. In that bedroom above that I have never visited. In that chair you sit in now. Maybe even here, on this sofa where I'm sitting. Maybe you laid yourself out on this sofa, completely bare? Your skin hot and sweat running down your back, sticking to the leather. You took yourself in your own hands, took your hands inside yourself, came to the thought of an encounter in the dark. (Did you imagine it was me? It could be me. We could pretend, angel. Two nameless men in a chaotic theater, a chance encounter in the night. If they asked me if I'd gotten his name, I could say no. If they asked you who you had been with, you could say you never even spoke. It would be true.) </em></p><p>"Did you now?" Crowley had asked, his voice quiet and strained.</p><p>"Yes," Aziraphale had said, uncrossing his legs again, keeping his eyes on Crowley and his voice steady. "I'm quite fond of the art films at the Scala. Did you know, my dear, that they're showing <em>Pandora's Box</em> this Saturday?"</p><p>"Are they?" (His miserable voice could not sink lower, dig deeper.)</p><p>"They are. It's a late showing. Six o'clock."</p><p>"Six o'clock," Crowley repeated faintly. </p><p>Aziraphale had sipped his drink, raised a brow. "Six o'clock sharp."</p><p>Now, at five forty-five on Saturday evening, Crowley stands in front of the theater, his hair whipping in the April chill. His face is pale and thin, his hair as red as a mistake. His covered eyes hungrily swallow up the building, grey against grey clouds. He swallows up the flower-curled and cast-iron railings, the miserable, dingy brick that had clearly been new once (that once is certainly not now). He takes bites from the dirty windows, the old air conditioner units hanging off the side. The pigeons, grey and unperturbed, stare at him without pause. He is perfectly still, hands shoved in his pockets. He had brushed disco out of his hair several years ago, favoring something slimmer and darker. His stillness combined with his rapt attention and sharp shoulders gives the impression of a cobra studying its prey. Waiting to strike.</p><p>Three drunks stumble over the steps, trouble at the railings, leering at the passersby.</p><p>The Scala isn't just any theater. Crowley has woven his wiles about it, tied them tight. Strangely, Crowley had not learned of it in London, just an easy fifteen-minute drive from his Mayfair flat. No, he had learned of it across the Atlantic. For several years, Crowley had lived in New York's Chelsea Hotel. An institution, nestled there on the grey-concrete block of 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso had lived there, had spilled whiskey on the carpet. Dylan Thomas had even given the Chelsea the great honor of doing most of his dying there, coughing up a lung in Room 205 as he had gone ungently into that good night. Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin had made love on the rickety old beds. Arthur Miller had even written about it once, that queer collection of unloved poets locked up in the red-brick building. The thing is, if you want to be something, a real something, you have to live at the Chelsea Hotel.</p><p>It had been easy pickings for a demon.</p><p>It’s no surprise that he had wound up there, caught in the spiderweb of the Chelsea Hotel. It had been a weird, strange place. He had looked for ghosts of old tenants in the wallpaper, beyond corners, up the twelve floors of the wide grand staircase. Crowley had found plenty to tempt in New York. When he had returned to London, he had followed the same humans to the Scala.</p><p>He had been strangely quieted the first time. Again, now, his eyes rise up, further up like bubbles in champagne, toward where the buildings pierce the sky. Up toward where the tall letters spell out the cinema’s name. It reminds him uncomfortably of the Tower of Babel, how in our audacity we had built a tower to Heaven. The Lord had looked at us in scorn, in fury, had torn us apart at the seams. Had scattered our languages, ripping us word from word from lost and useless word. (Crowley had cried out, his long hair whipping in the maelstrom, and tried to gather all the languages back up. He had taken tablets and papryi, scribbled out translations, trying to make bridges out of sound and syllable. <em>What are You afraid of? If they climb up there, if they peek over the wall? What are You afraid of them seeing? Lord, are you listening? Why have You stopped answering?)</em></p><p>The cinema is a strange underbelly, a draincatch for the queer and the lost. No one but the patrons could ever quite make it out, understand what made it tick. You might find an Ingmar Bergman film. You might catch a live show. Lou Reed had performed here once, back in 1972 on a double bill with Iggy Pop. (Crowley remembers. He had been there. He cannot look at the cover of <em>Transformer </em>without remembering the smell of that night. The stale beer and the leather jackets. The burning lights.) Cats wander the aisles, the empty rooms, mewling for food and attention. The interior is nothing much to speak of. Walking in, he always sees that it is shabby, the carpet fading and sunfaded. There are ghosts in the room, empty sockets. Outside, the city beats on. The sound of traffic drifts in, pedestrians, children, maybe a dog. </p><p>He walks across the carpet, buys a ticket for the show. The aisles are dark and quiet, the theater <em>miraculously </em>empty. Crowley collapses into a chair. The fabric is scratchy. Industrial grade, made to be tossed into hot bleach and hot water and never again spared a second thought. Hundreds of bodies have sat in these chairs, inhaling what the Scala can offer - a bit of borrowed time in another world. The tension mounts in his gut. Crowley twists to look around the dark room, trying to see if anyone else has entered. <em>Breathe, just breathe. </em>His hair is a wine stain, spread out like ink. He runs nervous hands through it and it looks as wild as treebranches against a pale sky. His fingers splay out across the chair, smoothing down the rough fabric. (His pale fingers are long and searching. Icepick fingers. Spider hands. Ever unpleasant and ever unsatisfied.) </p><p>The city drones on out there, beyond the walls, as if to remind him that it had been there before him and would be there after him. His heart beats on with the traffic. Love. He’s lost, once again, a stranger in a strange land. </p><p>A hot thrum pulses through his body. Heavy in his veins, in his bones. He closes his eyes and waits for the show to start, keeping the seat next to him free.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>In the Beginning, there was Eden.</p><p>There's still Eden. Crowley knows this. He's searched for years and found it again. There is a saying, you can’t go home again. Crowley wonders if that’s true. He’s followed the rivers and the winds, looking for centuries and millennia for something he’s lost. Eden, again, calling him home. The Garden was the Beginning and he wonders if it might be the End. Crowley stands in London, where Eden had once grown. He stares at the Scala, where an apple tree had once stood. </p><p>When Elvis bought Graceland in March 1957, he was certain it was where the Garden of Eden had originally been located. The experts, archaeologists and religious scholars, all disagreed. Certainly, according to intellectual review, according to science and fact, Eden (if it had ever existed at all), had been somewhere in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, nestled within the watery arms of those mother rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. Not Elvis, he knew things in his bones, he had known Paradise is in Memphis, Tennessee, somewhere in the cradle of the Civil War. He’d bought that piece of Eden for $102,500. He’d died there later, in August 1977, still in Eden.</p><p>Crowley knows the truth. After all, he had been there. They were all wrong. Graceland, the Promised Land, Eden is somewhere in London. </p><p>In the Garden, he had been drawn to the center. To a hill, where an apple tree had grown. In London, he is drawn again. To a hill, where a cinema stands.</p><p>Back again, back always.</p><p>We find our way back.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He is not alone when he wakes.</p><p>Crowley shifts a little, glancing over. He tilts his head, considering the other man. He is peculiar; he is as beautiful as a bonfire. Skin like parchment, hair the color of haybales and straw. His kaleidoscope eyes look like riverbeds. Crowley sits up, brushing the sleep from his face, pulling cobwebs from his eyelashes. His hair is mussed, the lines of his jacket imprinted in red on his face. He holds a cold can of cheap beer between his thighs.</p><p>It’s Aziraphale. It’s always Aziraphale. Crowley watches as Aziraphale drinks from his own bottle of wine. His throat works as he drinks, his Adam’s apple bouncing like a buoy on a lake. Crowley tries not to look. He searches out other details, like the diamond pattern in the carpet, the worn-down tread of his own boots.</p><p>The screen lights up. The show is starting. They do not speak. Not tonight, this silent and nameless encounter. Consider a theater. It has six screens. Ten. Twelve. Suspend, if just for a few hours, the reality you've been given and inhabit something else. Pick a new one. A new truth. Watch a different world, bear eyewitness. You will see it, hear it. As good as live it. Magic. An illusion. Make-believe, borrow another life for a little while. <em>(A life where I might touch you.)</em></p><p>Out of his peripheral vision, Crowley inhales the upturned nose, the folds of his face. The lines around his eyes. In the alcohol-scented dark, Crowley can pretend he does not know. Can pretend it's not Aziraphale touching him. That this is not an elaborate ritual invented to touch each other's skin with blameless hands and innocent mouths. Aziraphale's hand reaches for him, touching his thigh. Crowley gasps. (As if this is unexpected, as if they have never done this before. As if, each time, they are merely two strangers passing in the night, offering a shelter from the storm.) His legs fall apart easily. Barely touched and already desperate. He breathes in, keeping an eye on the screen, trying to keep himself still. </p><p>A hand moves closer, cupping Crowley through his jeans. There's a small sound from Aziraphale, quiet and pleased. Crowley flushes, knowing the heat of him is giving him away. The hardness of his cock betraying his already feverish need. Aziraphale traces ghostly touch along Crowley's cock. The denim presses in with the pressure, swiping over his head, making damp patches on his pants. </p><p>It's not enough. </p><p>A kind of magic. An illusion. Keep your eyes on the screen. <em>Please. I need you. (Touch me.) </em>He doesn’t know where Aziraphale is. A glance over his shoulder shows nothing but darkness. Aziraphale undoes his trousers. Here,  in the dark, a hand undoes Crowley’s own. Soft skin, the nails even and clipped. A hand moves forth, running up Crowley’s leg. He catches himself in surprise. Fingers rub against his dick, his already wet slit. There is nothing between Crowley and the angel against him but the thin fabric of his dark boxers. Aziraphale shifts, pulling Crowley with angelic steel into his lap. </p><p>Crowley bites back a moan.</p><p>Keep going. Keep your eyes on the screen. Borrow against your other senses. Crowley inhales, his nostrils flaring. Planning for anything. There’s the dirt on the Scala’s floor. The sweat of the bodies in their seats. The sharp cellulose of the film reels in their cans. There’s the ambergris of a well-known cologne. There’s the pale warmth of breath, whiskey trailing along the back. The smell of freshly washed cotton and linens. The metallic scent of a pocket watch (like blood, like a gun). Want blooms on Crowley’s tongue. Tasting like a gun fired. </p><p>Keep your eyes on the screen. Be good, just this once. No one follows the rules here. Be a rebel and do what you’re told. What about touch? The ridges of a hand. Mark out each bone. Phalanges and tendons, the angles and planes of the human body. The maps of veins on the back of this hand, ridges like a cartographer’s dream. The hand is hot. <em>Is that my heat? Is it yours? </em>He cannot tell if it is only his own desire reflected back at him. It doesn’t matter, he is aching. When his cock is taken in hand, Crowley tries not to cry out. </p><p>Touch. He is handfucked. Handmade. Each finger tracing along his desperation. It peaks as a thumb teases over the tip, smearing his wet mess all over. He is leaking. Soaked. Desperately wet with need, slick and obvious. He bites his lip to keep his mouth shut, to keep himself from sinking to the stained carpet, getting dirt on his knees, his open mouth on the cock pressing promisingly into his back. He wants his mouth open, to take it in and wolf it down. To swallow proudly, wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. Crowley presses backward into the <em>happy-to-see-me, </em>his body half-empty. The empty spaces within him calling out, clenching on air and loneliness. He wants to be filled. Fucked. Go on, put all the puzzle pieces in, complete the picture. (It doesn’t matter if they don’t fit.)</p><p>Hands slip through his legs, nudging them apart. Putting him on display. Look at him, this angular sharp thing with hair the color of shattered pottery, pulled apart to be seen. There are no eyes turned back in the dark, yet still, Crowley knows he is being watched, that he is held up to be appraised. His cock throbs, open and undefended, pushed forward by his spread legs. Wet and red. He wants to touch himself already. Wants to wrap a firm palm around his dick. He bites his own lip to ground chuck. His body pulses around nothing. </p><p>Empty. <em>So fucking empty. Please. </em></p><p>Soft hands curl tightly around his wrists. He cannot move, cannot do anything to get away. He doesn't want to. God, he wants this, to do this. Just this, to push his head back and squirm in the magical grasp of it all, snapping his hips from side to side. Aziraphale's promising cock goes with his movements, pressing into him and never giving him what he wants. Never entering. Just staying here, right on the edge. Crowley moans. He's going to come and he's not going to be able to do a thing to stop it. His orgasms are not his own anymore, they're Aziraphale's. He'll come as many times as Aziraphale asks, yes, over and over and over again. </p><p>Aziraphale has teased until now. Has let Crowley's jacket and shirt hang down, hiding the show from view. Now he hikes it up and Crowley glances down to see one firm hand wrapped around his cock. The way Aziraphale stands behind him gives the impression that this could be Crowley's own hand. It could be, but for once, it's not. The fingers are too short, the nailbeds too square and well-cared for Crowley's chest heaves as he watches the hand pull at him. It pauses to swipe at the tip, to collect more of Crowley's own leaking slick. </p><p>They do not speak. Not in words, no, but other languages exist. We did not evolve five senses to only use sound. Aziraphale waits, not entering him. Not taking him. Drags a questioning finger down Crowley's back, knocking on every vertebra of his spine. </p><p>
  <em>Are you ready? Am I welcome? (May I come in?)</em>
</p><p>Crowley pushes back, knocks back and parts like an invitation. Aziraphale sinks into him. Where he does not moan, his touch does the talking instead. Crowley feels the impossibly hard cock inside of him, the furious drag of it. The needy and careful way Aziraphale holds his hips steady. Aziraphale fucks into him, rocking together like a boat on dangerous waters, looking to capsize. <em>Is this real? </em>He wants to ask. Crowley swallows, his eyes closed and playing filmstrips in his imagination. He can tell himself a story, sell himself make-believe. Don't look behind the curtain, not yet. <em>What if this wasn't a grimy theater? What if I could talk to you? If you could talk to me? What if we didn't have to pretend to be accidental, didn't have to pretend that we didn't know each other, that this was a random encounter in the dark? Yes, this is the bookshop. The back room. You've crowded me up against the shelves with that light in your eyes and we'll have to apologize to Tolstoy in the morning. There will be a morning. You'll be there when I wake up. I'll borrow your cardigan, make us both tea. Ask you what your plans are for the day. </em></p><p>
  <em>I won't have to watch you go. Won't have to say goodbye. This is the Garden again. This time you won't leave. </em>
</p><p>He wants to come back tomorrow and to sift through the dirt. He wants to find their story, their names, carved into stone tablets. Proof that it happened. That it was real. <em>Do you remember the Flood? Do you remember the drowning? Do you remember the raven and the dove? I am telling you that the end of the world is coming. I can feel it, I hear whispers of it. I am telling you to build an ark, build a ship. Take me with you. Y </em><em>ou can tell me when it’s over. Tell me that we might live in rainbows.</em></p><p>Aziraphale fucks deeper into him, faster. He is slick and wet and his body yields, always making room for Aziraphale. He hisses quietly, his mouth open. Gasping for useless and fortifying air. It's just them. Just he and Aziraphale, their mud-baked bodies possessed by light. They were there in the Beginning, they will be there in the end too, bodiless and the size of galaxies. (He does not know how he might touch Aziraphale then, when they are made of burning stars and swirling nebulae, but he will find a way. There will be no tablets then. Hammurabi will be forgotten and Queen Victoria too. The sun will have swallowed the Earth and long, long since burnt out. There will be nothing but Creation. Just light and dark, as it was before.)</p><p>How long will they be here? He doesn't know. He imagines. He fantasizes about being here for days. Weeks. Months, perhaps. They could never be parted. He could sleep with Aziraphale held safe and warm within him. The cock in him quiet and quiescent. He could stay here, spitted on a hard cock, filled and fucked and full, never drying from the wet of it all. When he wakes, Aziraphale will wake with him and take him again, fucking Crowley until he comes. (Until Crowley does too, crying out and grasping at the theater floor.)</p><p><em>Breathe in, take me with you. </em>Crowley hears Aziraphale's harsh breath behind him, the rush of an inhale. We, including angels and demons, shed skin cells at a rate of approximately thirty-thousand per hour. Some of Crowley floats in the air, discards. Aziraphale too. When he inhales, he is taking part of Aziraphale within him, holding him safe within his lungs. The blood comes and mingles with this air. Some of Aziraphale might travel the highways of his body. His veins and arteries, his spidery capillaries. This angelic air brought to each muscle, to each bone, to each nerve and each cell, powering all of Crowley with light. Billions of cellular universes stacked upon each other. Aziraphale in every one of them. </p><p>Gasps. Sharp little breaths there against his ear. Stuttered and half-stopped. Held back. Moans in a jailcell of Aziraphale's mouth, held back. Crossed out and kept behind a stubborn tongue and clenched teeth. Sound is vibration propagating an acoustic wave, playing upon our eardrums. Aziraphale whispers <em>Crowley </em>as he comes, fingers tightening on Crowley's skinny hips. The vibrations of sound and body rattle all of Crowley's bones. Can you trust a sound to know that you are knocking against reality? We can record sound in music boxes and vinyl records. We can wrap it up in cassette taps. Keep your eyes on the screen, listen for the familiar beats of the movie. Hear the music swell, borrowed from somewhere and someone else. Sound, recorded decades ago from now-gone mouths, still rattling our bones with their vibrations.</p><p>The illusion again. Keep your eye on the screen. You heard nothing. (Or did you?)</p><p>This bit of ozone, the brush of petrichor from the open hallway, the tracked-in rain and mud. A hint of lavender. Finely milled French soaps, shaped like shells and set in a porcelain dish on Aziraphale’s sink. The skin against his cheek, this hand pressed here. He turns, kissing the open palm. (Crowley expects to leave a mark, to pull away and leave redness there like stigmata. There’s nothing. He pulls away and Aziraphale is whole.) </p><p>White light. He comes just as he wants to, wrapped in Aziraphale's firm grip. White-eyed and white-hearted. White light and white heat, spilling out over Aziraphale's knuckles.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Aziraphale is lingering outside when Crowley leaves the Scala, a careful fifteen minutes apart. Tomorrow, this will have never happened. Just like every other time. Every other night is a universe, a singular universe, contained within multitudes. Tomorrow will be a perfect day, won’t it? He is waiting for a tomorrow that has never come but Crowley keeps hope caught between his teeth like a knife. There will be sangria in the park and he will be someone else. Someone good, someone bad. Someone briefly human, if only for a night. </p><p>There are many mythical places in legend. For most writers, they have always been in the west, following the sun to its death. Tolkien had talked of the mythical west, to where his heroes had retired. Avalon is in the southwest of England. It had even stuck around in American mythology, when Horace Greeley, that old editor, had said go west, young man. We came from Eden, we seek Eden again. Crowley has lost something. He is looking for Eden, his stomach growling. The itch to explore digs at him, somewhere deep between the shoulder blades. Where does it lead? Where are we going (where have we been)? He aches with the need to get on with it already, that strange sticky feeling that destiny is just around the next corner waiting. It is so hard, so much, wanting to swallow down the moon, filled to the brim and antsy with the promise of your own future.</p><p>Once upon a time, we were spun out of gold. There was light and there was dark and existence was gorgeous in both. Are we good? We ask, wanting to know. Are we bad? Are we right? Wrong? Up or down? In or out? The Perfecti, in their Carcassonne castle, had listened to Crowley and said, <em>there must have been two gods. The good one and the bad one. The god who made the earth and drowned us in our baths, that god must be evil, mustn’t he? We are angels trapped in briefly earthly things. From His hands, material earth must be evil, trapping us and keeping us here. </em></p><p>Mud. We began in mud. There in Sumeria, there on the reedy edges of long-lost rivers, we stood up and had nothing but the mud of ourselves and the mud of the earth. We packed the mud into bricks, we formed plates and jars from mud. Our language came from mud and all of those thereafter. We built ourselves, using only the building blocks given to us. Using only this God-given mud and the clay of our bodies too. Tell me where, in all of Creation, we might find the profane. Crowley looks at his hands, digging hard into his own pockets, still smelling of Aziraphale and dirt too.</p><p>He had seen nothing profane. Not then, not there. (Not this love.)</p><p>Crowley hesitates in the door before moving back out, back into London. Buildings rise up on either side, the asphalt is black and hard beneath his feet. Steam curls out of the manhole covers and street grates. Everything in grey and black, gradations, as beautiful as an underpainting. As beautiful as a gelatin silver photograph. He has dabbled in photography (he has dabbled in everything). Take the photograph, suspend silver salts in gelatin and paint the glass. Process the latent image, develop. He wants to tear the image from his retinas, spit it out on paper, say <em>this, this is the city I live in, the city of promise, this is what is beautiful. I am here; I lived. And I loved you. </em>He thinks of the archaeologists of the future. They will come later, with their trowels and sifters, mark this off as a dig site. the city suspended into perfect numbered squares. They will peel away the layers, one by one, until they find old skeletons of the city. If he had been human, they might find his bones too. They wouldn’t know his name but they would give him one. Dust him off, put him up behind plexiglass with alarms connected and a little plaque that says Homo sapiens sapiens, early 21st century (approx.). Discovered in London, May 2238. There are many stories bones do not tell, they would not say <em>My name is Crowley, once I met someone named Aziraphale. He had blue-green eyes and mine were yellow. I liked to sing in the car sometimes. I loved him always. So on, so forth.</em></p><p>“I have a new bottle of scotch,” Aziraphale ventures, his eyes bright in the London night. “If I might, well -“</p><p>“Tempt me?” Crowley grins. (He is still damp between his thighs. His hips ache. His hands are empty, yes, but perhaps not always. Perhaps not for long.) He opens the passenger door of the Bentley, nodding his head toward it. “A late dinner then, angel?”</p><p>"Marvelous," Aziraphale nods. "I hear the Ritz is doing quite a nice pheasant lately." </p><p>There are beginnings and there are endings and there are those we cannot tell apart. If the archaeologists had dug further, stuck their trowels deeper still beneath their feet, they would have found an ancient wall and a crumbling gate. Feathers trapped in amber, fossilized apple seeds, the beginning of the very world. The shattered heart (as red as Attic pottery) that Crowley had dropped when Aziraphale had left one way and Crowley had gone another. A bit of ache and want and misery-soaked love all boxed up and buried too. And there, deep in the dark, a bit of hope.</p><p>Their story is not over but we will leave them here. In a Garden where the last moment is just as the first.</p><p>An angel cloaked in light, offering a smile to someone who has always been familiar.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
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